Archive for February, 2009

Designing games is not often a lone art. Game designers, playtesters, rules writers, art guys and more all have creative input into the process.

If you weren’t thinking about it, you’d probably email around Word or Excel documents, having people make changes and trying to manage the updates manually. This is often a recipe for lost work and disaster.

There are many collaboration tools available for managing the game design process, and it’s really worth your time to get practice in using one, it’ll save itme and heart ache later.

Google Docs is a good choice for getting started quickly. It’ll be familiar to anyone who’s used Word or Excel, and if these did what you needed, then it’ll probably be good enough, it’s also free.

37 Signals produce Basecamp, project management and collaboration tools. It’s not free, but if you are managing collaboration from a big group, it might be what you need

If you don’t want to pay for these options, and have the technical skills, then running your own Wiki or CMS (Content Management System) is an option. There are lots of these systems around, have a look over this list, and pick one that has the features you need.

To successfully develop a game with a team of people requires a bit of discipline, and treating it as a project rather than an ad-hoc collection of stuff.

Find the tools you can use to help you, and the process will be a lot smoother.

Introducing players to new games, and new players to games are important to your own continuing enjoyment of the games you play.

Playing with the same group of people can get stale, taking the same strategies each time, knowing what people will do before they make the move.

Adding in new players gives you a chance to look at the game afresh, remind yourself of the rules you might have forgotten of been getting wrong, and maybe see some new approaches you’ve not considered. Also, more players means more chances to play a game, which can’t hurt.